Pierre Boulez Studies

This collection explores the works, influence, reception and legacy of one of the most important composers in contemporary musical life.

Edward Campbell (Edited by), Peter O'Hagan (Edited by)

9781107062658, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 October 2016

408 pages, 9 b/w illus. 23 tables 103 music examples
25.3 x 18.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.99 kg

'By bringing together a substantial amount of recent scholarship in a highly accessible format, this collection of essays should open up numerous avenues for exploration and have a significant impact on future research in this area. … The availability of groundbreaking scholarship that had previously only been published in other languages to the general English-speaking public will hopefully have an impact, broadening and refining understanding of his music. The diverse readership that this book targets through the accessibility of its content is clearly beneficial to its wider aim of disseminating scholarship on this relatively understudied repertoire.' Catherine Losada, Music Theory Spectrum

Pierre Boulez is acknowledged as one of the most important composers in contemporary musical life. This collection explores his works, influence, reception and legacy, shedding new light on Boulez's music and its historical and cultural contexts. In two sections that focus firstly on the context of the 1940s and 1950s, and secondly on the development of the composer's style, the contributors address recurring themes such as Boulez's approach to the serial principle and the related issues of form and large-scale structure. Featuring excerpts from Boulez's correspondence with a range of his contemporaries here published for the first time, the book illuminates both Boulez's relationship with them and his thinking concerning the challenges which confronted both him and other leading figures of the European avant-garde. In the final section, three chapters examine Boulez's relationship with audiences in the United Kingdom, and the development of the appreciation of his music.

Preface
Part I. The Context of the Late 1940s and 1950s: 1. Pierre Boulez: composer, traveller, correspondent Edward Campbell
2. Traces of an apprenticeship: Pierre Boulez's Sonatine (1946/1949) Susanne Gärtner
3. Schoenberg vive Jessica Payette
Part II. The Evolution of a Style: 4. 'A score neither begins nor ends
at most it pretends to': fragmentary reflections on the Boulezian non finito Robert Piencikowski
5. Serial organisation and beyond: cross-relations of determinants in Le Marteau sans maître and the dynamic pitch-algorithm of Constellation Pascal Decroupet
6. 'Du Fond d'un Naufrage': the quarter-tone compositions of Pierre Boulez Werner Strinz
7. Alea and the concept of the 'work in progress' Peter O'Hagan
8. Casting new light on Boulezian Serialism: unpredictability and free choice in the composition of Pli selon pli – portrait de Mallarmé Erling E. Guldbrandsen
9. Serial processes, agency and improvisation Joseph Salem
10. Listening to doubles in stereo Jonathan Goldman
11. Composing an improvisation at the beginning of the 1970s Paolo Dal Molin
Part III. Reception Studies: 12. Pierre Boulez in London: the William Glock years Peter O'Hagan
13. Tartan from Baden-Baden: Boulez at the 1965 Edinburgh International Festival Edward Campbell
14. Pierre Boulez and the suspension of narrative Arnold Whittall.

Subject Areas: Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups [AVH], Western "classical" music [AVGC], Music [AV]